Five years ago in January we came to Tennessee to see if we would like to live here.  We spent a week and went home with a contract on a cute little house in Bluff City in our pocket.  I knew it was the house for us when Marvin said, “there’s two years worth of projects here”.  He is not a man to sit around.  I loved the house and I knew if he had something to do on it he would be happy.  We have managed to stretch his fun out to five years and recently he tackled the last major project: the kitchen floor.

We’ve been concerned all along that there was rot in the doorway between the kitchen and living room because not only was the floor lumpy, the longer we lived there the springier it got.  The fact that the guy who had tried to “redo” the place to sell it had put down linoleum the thickness of tissue paper (it ripped in 3 places when we moved in) and had actually used nails we could see around the edges was something we were just ignoring altogether.  We also had an odd musty smell in the corner by the sink I thought might be floor related.

Last week Marvin finally pulled up the linoleum to see what lurked beneath.  (One of the hardest parts was pulling up all the nails.)  The musty smell was dry rot but the lumpy part was fine.  It just needed a little more bracing in the cellar.  After pulling the trim, repairing two water damaged areas, caulking the floor cracks and wrestling with the appliances, he laid the new floor.  It is beautiful!!  Here’s a little slide show to show off his great work:

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